Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,47

superstitious lot. You have your monsters; they have their demons.” She fell silent.

“But?” Serefin prompted.

“Your father has become quite interested in prophecies made by a Tranavian mage named Piotr. Apparently he killed himself right after the foretelling. Threw himself into a lake with a brick tied around his neck. That’s a death you read about in the Kalyazi book of martyrs.”

“What kind of foretelling?”

“Damned if I know.” She grinned.

Kacper shot him a pointed look. Serefin leaned back in his chair.

“But, topically,” Pelageya continued. “Piotr himself was quite fascinated with an apocryphal Kalyazi story about a woman named Alyona Vyacheslavovna. She was just another Kalyazi martyr and yet the story goes that she ascended to godhood. Wouldn’t that be a fate?”

Serefin raised an eyebrow. Apocryphal Kalyazi stories weren’t going to do him any good right now.

He still felt too unsafe to say the words aloud. To say he suspected his father was going to kill him in the midst of the Rawalyk. He didn’t have any proof, just a foreboding shadowing his every thought. “I think my father wants to put the winner of the Rawalyk on the throne,” he said.

“Of course he does. It’s all a test to find our next royal consort, is it not?” Pelageya said, but her black eyes returned to Serefin’s face. She knew what he was suggesting.

“I think he wants me out of the picture.”

Kacper shook his head. “The people would riot. The low princes would—”

“The low princes would see it as an unfortunate death, but be thankful the Rawalyk had decided a new line now that the High Prince is gone,” Serefin said, interrupting him.

Kacper blinked. “It still doesn’t make sense. You’re his only heir.”

Serefin lifted his eyebrows. He was the only heir, yes, but he was also the stronger mage, the one shifting the war to Tranavia’s favor, the one history would remember. Kacper’s expression darkened.

Pelageya nodded. “Blood and blood and bone. Magic and monsters and tragic power.”

Serefin heard Kacper’s irritated huff of breath and shot him a warning look.

“This whole world is going mad,” Pelageya said. “The war is eating at us all. Can it continue? Will it continue forever? Will someone finally break the cycle or will we be plunged into a new century of death? The Kalyazi have their hope; what do the Tranavians have, eh? Their king. Their prince. The knowledge that their king and their prince are undeniably mortal. Their Vultures? That terrible cult.”

Serefin’s eyes narrowed. Kacper stiffened.

“What if the prince were a harder one to kill? Blood and blood and bone. What if those gods the Kalyazi worship aren’t gods at all? Demons of superstition, monsters and magic.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Kacper grumbled. He put a hand on Serefin’s shoulder, trying to get him to leave.

Pelageya stared past Serefin’s shoulder. “You drive a spike into their neck. You wait until the wailing stops, you give them a draught of blood. Drink it! Drink it all, never mind whose it is for you will be dead in—ah, three, two, one. Again. Another. That one failed. That did not work. Mortals are so fragile, so easy to break, but blood … Blood and blood and bone. The Salt Mines work so hard, the Vultures so meticulous in their specific brand of torture. The answer is here. The answer has always been here. Gut the Kalyazi churches, melt their gold, grind their bones. Divinity and blood and blood and bone.”

Kacper’s hand tightened. Serefin could feel his speeding pulse through his fingertips.

Pelageya twitched. Her hand reached out, long fingers stretched into the air. “The girl. The girl and the monster and the prince … and…” She twitched again, waving her hand by her ear against some imaginary irritant. “And the … queen? Not a queen but a queen. The queen of the wraith or the dark. But no. Power and blood and this pageantry is just a facade and there is more, there is more. The signs will come as they do and they will be ignored or heeded but they are signs, only signs.”

“Serefin!” Kacper tugged on Serefin’s arm. He pulled away.

“You have time! Time is slipping but it’s there, it’s there, it remains to be captured. You take it, you hold it. The girl and the monster and the prince and the last one is wrong, the last one hides in the darkness, in the shadows. And maybe the boy made of gold and the boy made of darkness are mirrors. And maybe all will be swallowed by